Global Security Watch: Kenya

Article excerpt

Contrary to its strategic insignificance to the United States in the post-immediate Cold War era, Africa in post-9/11 has gained primacy in U.S. foreign policymakers' quest for energy sources and the war against terrorism.

Author Donovan C. Chau examines Kenya's strategic partnership with the United States by analyzing the two nation's common security threats in Greater East Africa, since 9/11. Threats shared by both countries include the Iraqi and Afghan wars, insurgencies in Somalia and Yemen, the potential of renewed conflicts in Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the threat of terrorism from the Horn of Africa.

Chau discusses the significance of Kenya's geography, politics, and armed forces to the strategic partnership. Kenya felt "surrounded by hostile countries--socialist Tanzania and aggressively militant Uganda." Socialist Tanzania had patchy, strained relationships with Western capitalist-oriented Kenya because of its close relations with United States. Democratic Tanzania's and 1998 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania waned the strained relationship. The attacks strengthened U.S. relations with Kenya and also increased its presence in Greater East Africa.

Militarist and belligerent Idi Amin's Uganda's alliance with the Soviet Union and Muslim states "altered the strategic balance in the region" and strained relationships with Kenya, Tanzania, and Kenya's Western allies including Israel. Uganda's support for Palestinian terrorists, who hijacked an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Entebbe and negotiated demands from there, heightened its threat and strengthened the strategic partnership to confront the challenges posed. …